Monthly Archives: February 2007

Recently I was asked to give a motivational speech for a group. My subject was never giving up your dream–something I know plenty about.

My entire life I’ve wanted to be a writer. I wrote stories as a child, put out a magazine as a teenager and wrote plays for the neighborhood children to put on. When I got married at 18, my writing life was put on hold. Oh, I kept my hand in all right, besides giving birth to and raising five children, I produced the PTA newsletter and wrote plays for my Camp Fire Girls to star in, and I still churned out a bit of fiction.

Finally, when the kids had grown quite a bit, I started writing an historical family saga based on my family genealogy. When it was finished, I began the process of sending it to publishers. This was back in the days before computers and copying machines. This book was rejected nearly thirty times before it found a publisher. By this time I was in my late forties. I sent the next book to the same publisher, but the editor who had accepted the first one was gone and the new editor wasn’t interested.

I did find a publisher, but the owner of the publishing company turned out to be a crook. Instead of sending royalties, he was using his profits to gamble at Vegas. He was arrested and I was sent all the books he’d produced.

I’d written a Christian horror novel and searched hard for a publisher. The Christian publishers thought it was too scary for their audience and the secular publishers felt it was too Christian for their readers. Finally a small, independent publisher told me he’d love to print it but I needed to get it camera ready first. Yes, we had computers by this time but no easy program for publishing. For months, I went to a computer store at 6 a.m., worked on the computer there to make the book camera ready until 9 a.m. when the store opened. When it was finally done, I called the publisher only to find out that he’d died.

I’m not sure where this falls in the sequence of things, but I’ve had at least four agents over the years. The first one was handling one of my historical family sagas and he taught me a lot, but never sent the book out once. The second agent didn’t know what she was doing. The third represented my Tempe Crabtree series and in four years only sent the book out three times. The fourth agent loved the titles of my books but only sent them out a couple of times. I figured if I was ever to be published again, I needed to take the reins into my own hands.

My first mystery was published by another crooked outfit. This time I had a booksigning, fifty books arrived, all of them were sold, but the company had pulled up stakes and no more books could be found. A small independent publisher offered to re-publish the book. She did the first printing sold out. She then published four books in my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series. We had a terrific relationship, then she died of a stroke. I lost a good friend.

This meant I had to locate another publisher for my Tempe series. Fortunately, I’d met the publisher of Mundania Press at a couple of writing conferences and was impressed by his grasp of the publishing world and he offered me a contract for the next two in the series.

Before most people knew anything about electronic publisher I signed on with to do my Rocky Bluff P.D. series. This was before anyone had discovered the POD technology or handheld devices for reading books. My books looked wonderful but no one was interested in reading a novel from their computer screen. That publisher faded away. I eventually found another electronic publisher who was also using POD technology to print trade paperbacks. The first two book in the series were published, looked great, but the royalties didn’t arrive and the third book didn’t look like it would be printed any time soon. Once again I searched for another publisher. Tigress Press accepted and published Fringe Benefits which is available now as an e-book and a trade paperback from my website and Amazon.com.

Hard Shell Word Factory, one of the oldest and best of the electronic publishers, published Kachima Spirit and the prequel to my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series, Deadly Trail, as well as the electronic versions of the first four books in that series.

My other two Christian horror, Deeds of Darkness and Cup of Demons, found a home with Treble Heart Books and are available as e-books and trade paperbacks from http://trebleheartbooks.com and my website.

If I had let rejections, crooked publishers, agents who didn’t do anything and deaths stand in my way, my dream of being a published author would never have happened. Life is full of disappointments and set-backs, but don’t let any of them stop you from hanging onto your dream.

It’s a given that you know how to write, at least to some degree. The fact that you’re reading is a dead give away. Readers can also write. How well is another question entirely. But we all have to start somewhere. So write away. Don’t let anything stop you. You may also have a clue as to what you’ll write. Although the answer to that question is tougher than most people give it credit for. Are you planning on specializing or casting a wide net? There are good cases to be made for either approach. If you’ve got the stamina to become an authority on the fascinating hobby of butterfly collecting, there is without a doubt at least one publisher who has a home for your work. But you might prefer tap dancing back and forth between that butterfly collectors article and a series on classic car restoration – followed by a piece on responsible parenting – which leads to a shot at interviewing Justin Timberlake on the transition from child performer to adult stardom.

Either way, you’ll find your fingers on the keyboard and your brain stretching to find the right words ahead of your deadline.

Perhaps the least asked question writers ponder is the least obvious. Why write in the first place? You may choose to write in order to vent your considerable passion for the arts – or to fill your wallet. Neither choice is wrong. Although to be honest, the financial motivation is considerably more difficult to satisfy than the creative impulse might be.

Ideally, the work will find a balance of those two opposing forces.

The drive to create has its place. It’s this insatiable yearning that causes us to write, rewrite and if necessary, rewrite again. When we finally read our finished piece in print, we may feel a sudden twinge at finding that our editor has made even more changes to our finished product, however slight. But that public lesson in grammar and sentence construction sticks with us. We vow to do a better job next time, to write a perfect piece. And we set out to do just that. Often we fall short. But on occasion we hit the mark and we find confirmation in that fact. Writing is our destiny.

But life in the real world has a price. There is no shame in sitting down at the keyboard with an eye on ultimately cashing a check in exchange for the work being committed to the page. The publisher is in business to make a profit, as is the distributor of the magazine you’re submitting your work to. The magazine stand that sells the copies your name is so proudly carried in is also hoping to see a positive cash flow from their efforts. Why not you too? Writing is a job as much as it is an art form. So why not acknowledge that fact from the outset. The act of attaching a dollar figure to your work may be a real motivating force for some of us. If nothing else, it’s a reminder that the work matters in ways beyond our own ego. There’s cash at stake. Do a good job and there may be more. Fall down on the job and there won’t.

The question has always been there. It will always hang over our heads, our hands and our hearts. Do we write for art or are we driven to create by our hunger for compensation. The honest answer just might be, both.

What makes you believe that the character you’re reading about is a real person? And what makes you want to find out more about them?

For me, these are two crucial factors for a fiction writer to consider. If you don’t believe in the character, you won’t be interested in what they’re doing or care what happens to them. And if you don’t want to find out more about them, then the story will have no real ‘guts’.

So how do you establish a level of characterisation?

There are two main tactics that writers can employ: speech and action.

When our characters speak in inverted commas, we hear them directly. There is no mediation by the author, no commentary by someone telling us what to think – we simply ‘hear’ the person speaking. So to make our characters real, they must use the language we expect them to use. Crooks don’t, on the whole, talk like college professors, and vice versa. Consequently we have a number of tools we can use:

– diction: the choice of words
– pace: the length of sentence together with punctuation
– structure: how the words are put together

Diction

“‘Man, I don’ lend my sled to nobody!’
‘Then who’d you lend your 12-gauge pump shotguns to? Boy, you spill on that.’
‘Man, I tol’ you I don’t own no shotgun!’
Jack stepped in. ‘Tell me about the Purple pagans. Are they a bunch of guys who like purple cars?'”

(James Ellroy, LA Confidential)

Here, the contrast between Jack’s slang-free speech and that of Leonard and Denton, crook and cop, sets him apart and is a ‘voice of reason’ whom the reader can identify with. Whenever he speaks, we listen and know that he’s using logic and rationality to gather evidence and filter information. He’s characterised as the good guy.

Pace

“‘Well, that’s a barn all right, and a beautifully drawn barn. I very much like the pattern of light and dark. You’re very talented, Sanford.’
‘And that’s a tobacco plant growing. That’s what they look like. See, it’s shaped like a triangle. They’re big. That one’s still got the blossom on top. It’s before they top it.'”

(Philip Roth, The Plot Against America)

Here the Rabbi’s more languorous sentences are compared to the young Sandy’s, which are choppy, eager, each sentence replicating a thought as it occurs to the young mind. The immaturity of his teenage mind is captured in sentences which also are immature, not shaped in the same way as the rabbi’s are. Notice also the rabbi’s more mature diction – ‘I very much like’.

Structure

“‘What do you think?’ he demanded imperiously.
‘About what?’
He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.
‘About that. As a matter of fact, you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.’
…
‘Who brought you?’ he demanded. ‘Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought.’

(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)

In this extract we see the man characterised by his repetition of phrases. Fitzgerald has structured his speech to show how the man’s mind works. He makes an observation, then uses the same word to enlarge on the observation – ascertain, ascertained; brought, brought. This slight structuring of his dialogue is enough to fix him in our minds as someone probably small-minded or precise and probably a little smug.

The second tool we writers have at our disposal, apart from speech, is action.

We get involved with the lives of a character when they do something out of the ordinary – whether it’s risky in a physical or psychological sense, or simply unusual in that we couldn’t see ourselves behaving in the same way. When that happens, we try to attribute a motive to their actions because it’s a human trait to want to understand why other people behave the way they do.

Why does Gatsby say he was driving the car that killed Myrtle Wilson instead of Daisy? Why does Yossarian act the way he does when asked to fly more missions? Why does Holden Caulfield abscond from school to visit his sister Phoebe? All of these are actions that help characterise the hero as ‘different’. And in the same way that we’re attracted to the ‘bad’ boys and girls at school, this refusal by our characters to follow a traditional, safe pattern of behaviour is what draws readers to them.

So characterising our heroes and heroines, and the lesser personae, isn’t just a case of making them look different physically (a common trait of beginning writers). It’s also a case of putting them in situations where they can make strong decisions that we don’t expect or even understand. And making them speak in ways that differentiate them from each other using different vocabularies, length of sentences and structured phrases. Then the reader begins to really see how they are different from each other – and interesting to want to read more about.

Many new, young writers wonder where others find their inspiration. Unfortunately many new writers spend so much time focusing on story ideas that they miss the “muse” that can be right in front of them.

Some things to consider doing if you are feeling stuck in your writing or feel that you lack good ideas:

1. Get out: Go for a walk, run some simple errands, anything. You may be surprised at how productive this can be for your writing.

You have literary work, finally out of your mind and onto paper or anxiously awaiting rescue from your hard drive. Now, how do you share the story you spent months or years tediously toiling over if you have ‘no name?’ Not too long ago, I facilitated my “Bumpy Road Toward the Land of the Published” workshop in my hometown for a writers group who are a little up in age. I shared with them different approaches toward getting published, to include a variety of vanity presses and self-publishing methods that I support as acceptable, suitable trends and realistic paths for first time authors. I overheard one lady tell another “Oh, that’s not for you. Your work is much too good for that.” When I looked at the lady receiving the advice, I felt saddened to think she may never see her story in print. What a shame to miss that joy. I firmly believe that if you have a story to tell, people somewhere want to read it. Finding those people without the traditional publisher backing will be a challenge of course, but marketing is another issue. It’s quite evident from the comment made during the workshop that, for a variety of reasons, the debate rages on between those choosing to self-publish and those who believe traditional publishing is the only venue with any credibility. It’s more a personal choice than a debate, really, but unfortunately the self-published, quite often, end up paying a higher price than the fee recorded on their invoice for the POD package they chose. Those who self-publish also risk being viewed with less respect by those who harshly perceive the unread self-publisher’s work as not “good” enough to be considered by a TPH. Since written work is so subjective; interests and tastes so varied, “good” or even “great” by whose standards? I’ve read many a book, traditionally published and extravagantly hyped, that left me wondering, why(?). And don’t people know and maybe they don’t, that Lewis Carrol, Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Virginia Wolf and the list goes on, all self-published? Yes, they represent a different time and times are definitely different now, or maybe it’s the people who are truly different now. I’ve spoken with some “writers” who care more about the possibility of a windfall than their art or the message they wish to convey. In the case of the elderly folks in the workshop, I think they were just unfamiliar with the progressive choices. The bottom line is, traditional publishing houses are in the business to make money, not to turn out literary masterpieces. The dollar is their focus and as many dollars as possible their goal. Traditional Publishing houses have no interest in me if I’m not a celebrity or affiliated with those of celebrity status, unless I managed, through some freak incident, to capture fifteen minutes of outrageous media attention. Those anonymous chunks of fifteen minutes happen quite often in the world and afford traditional publishers the convenience to fish out of a fairly congested barrel. Let’s be real. If I were walking alone through a meadow and accidentally fell into an uncovered but brush hidden, wet well, was unable to climb out and had to tread water for fifteen days, subsisting only by catching minnows with my teeth as they swam past my mouth before my rescuer, a seven-year-old Asian boy who’s only been in this country for a week, found me while playing with his dog, Lucky Penny, who he just saved from euthanasia two days ago, some “Traditional” publishing company just might want my story. I would have to be one of those extremely rare fortunates or unfortunates. Every time I watch a talk show and see an author promoting their new book, I always wonder (if I haven’t seen that person in the headlines in the last year or so) what connection they have with the talk show host? It usually comes out during the segment. Oh . . . she’s the wife of the chef of one of Martha’s favorite restaurants. Oh . . . he’s the brother of the lead singer of a band that Ellen is so crazy about right now. Oh . . . she’s the Mother of the guy Oprah is trying to fix Gail up with. Our lives are the stories we share and sharing life through fantasy or reality is what writers and storytellers are compelled to do. Written work becomes something personal between the author and the reader. I don’t know why we should or would allow traditional publishers, solely, to decide for us what is publication worthy. The traditional process is also very time consuming, and time is a commodity most of us don’t like to waste. As a first time author, sending your manuscript to a traditional publisher when you don’t have that “Kevin Bacon” connection, is very much like buying a lottery ticket. I think we all know the odds aren’t in our favor. Since I had my druthers, my choice was to stay out of the barrel and still take the opportunity to tell my story. Self-publishing, especially for the first time author, just might be “Intelligent and Realistic Publishing.”

I will be honest with you. My desk is not clean. It wasn’t clean last week, or last month or last year. As a matter of fact, I think it’s fair to say that my desk is kept in a constant state of unkempt glory. I make no apologies for this absolutely true detail of my working life. I also take no pride in it. It is merely a fact. Take it or leave it.I must admit however that I enjoy the surprises I get when I attempt to reorganize the clutter that clings so precariously to my desktop. That goes double for the explosion of papers spilling from my file cabinet.

This isn’t a task I take on with any joy or regularity. But when I do, I am constantly surprised by the cast-offs and unfinished work I find laying there, forgotten, unedited, unpublished. My most recent foray into the lost art of cleaning happened just this past weekend, as I completed a move of my office from an unused bedroom in the house to a new addition my wife and I have recently completed.

Hidden in the piles of receipts kept for no apparent reason, school records that have long since become unimportant and financial records that I really need to keep a handle on, I found stories. Lots of stories actually. Most were copies of published work, saved in the format the editor first saw. A few were outlines of ideas that went either went nowhere, or worse, somewhere I didn’t care to go. But a few were gems. In rough form, certainly. But gems nonetheless. Perfectly good story ideas that have been patiently waiting for me to rediscover them at some undetermined day in the future.

That day was yesterday. The work to resurrect them starts tomorrow.
It’s for this reason that I write virtually all my story ideas down with a fair level of specificity. I may forget my phone number, or my anniversary, or even the exact age of my children (although in my defense, that hasn’t actually happened yet) but I never lose a story idea. Not completely anyhow. I’ve got a storehouse full of them scattered across my desk, under a book I stopped reading a few months ago and in my now somewhat lighter filing cabinet – freshly relieved of a good ten pounds worth of unnecessary paperwork. All of which may point to a sloppy work ethic that allows me to build up a disturbingly large collection of scrap paper that’s only cleared away under the most unusual circumstances. Or it may be my insurance against writers block. Having reams of stray ideas laying all over the desktop does tend to keep me from taking a day off with the excuse that I’m blocked and can’t think of a thing to write.

It does keep me from cleaning, however. It’s too hard to separate the wheat from the chaff on the average day. So it stays, accumulating for months, even years at a time. Until the day comes when I rediscover an idea that I’d previously cast off. With enough care and polish, some of those ideas find life when viewed from a new perspective.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself today. My desk is at least a bit more tidy than it was at this time last week. I make no promises for the future, however. None except that I will continue to have ideas, sketch them out and collect them for future consideration.
Who knows where today’s stray thought may lead?

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